


Hiding in the Dark

by jnic84



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Episode: s02e03 School Hard, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gen, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 05:10:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5151473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jnic84/pseuds/jnic84
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Cordelia wasn’t the one stuck in the closet with Willow in School Hard? Done for the Which Witch ficathon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hiding in the Dark

Hiding in the Dark   
Author: Jami   
Pairing: Willow/Xander sort of.   
Spoilers: Season 2, School Hard   
Summary: What if Cordelia wasn’t the one stuck in the closet with Willow in School Hard? Done for the Which Witch ficathon.   
Disclaimer: I own nothing, don’t sue, I have no money to give you anyways.   
Feedback: I live for it!! 

1/1 

 

“Tell me again how I got stuck doing this?” Cordelia made a disgruntled face as she halfheartedly whittled the piece of wood in front of her into a stake. 

“You’re helping Buffy out of the goodness of your heart, remember?” Xander replied with exaggerated slowness, smirking when the cheerleader raised her head to glare at him. “Oh wait,” he added with a sarcastic smile, “that would imply you actually *had* a heart.” 

“Ha, ha,” she retorted dryly, barely resisting the urge to stick her tongue out at him. Only her superior sense of maturity held her at bay. There was no way she was going to reduce herself to becoming as childish as Xander Harris. 

“Yes, well,” murmured Giles as he crossed the library toward the counter where the Miss Calendar stood, nose stuck in a book as he walked, “while I hate to interrupt your…witty…banter, we do have a more pressing issue,” he reminded them both tersely. “Xander, go fetch Buffy and Willow. The more I read about this Spike character, the more I worry about Saturday night.” 

“So is running now an option?” Xander asked eagerly. “Because between running like a coward and dying like a hero, I’m all for being a coward.” 

“It’s worked for you so far,” Cordelia smirked, ignoring her work and smiling up at him with a mocking grin. Xander returned her smile with a tense one of his own and opened his mouth to let out a scathing reply, but his retort was cut off by Giles’ rather loud cough. 

“Xander,” the Watcher sighed in exhaustion as he pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled slowly, “just…go.” 

“Whatever you say, G-man,” he saluted, and offering Cordy a wide, obviously feigned smile to which she simply glared as he pushed open the double doors of the library and stepped out into the sparsely crowded hall. 

Glancing from left to right, he spotted Buffy and her mother congregating by the punch bowl and started toward them, noting the pale dread that was now drawn on his friend’s face as Mrs. Summers turned on her heel and marched past him, mouth set in an angry line. In contrast, Principal Snyder appeared quite pleased with himself as he turned away from the scene and sauntered away toward his office. 

“Bad night, Buff?” Xander frowned as he stepped up to join her dumbstruck form. 

“Understatement of the year,” she muttered as she shook herself out of her funk and turned her attention to the snack table in front of her. Buffy busied her self wiping crumbs off the tablecloth and gathering the paper cups that needed to be discarded. “People are so gross,” she muttered with a grimace as she collected the garbage and unceremoniously dropped it into a large trashcan. 

“Giles wanted you and Willow in the library for a little pre-St. Vigeous powwow,” he jumped in, hands stuffed in his pants pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels. “Have you seen Will around?” 

“She took off after my mom showed up to give me the third degree,” Buffy sighed. “I think she headed down the hall,” she pointed to his right before running a frustrated hand through her hair. “I bet Giles wants to talk strategy. I don’t do strategy. Strategy and I do not mix.” 

“I think he just wants to make sure you make it out of Saturday, you know—alive,” he suggested awkwardly with a shrug. 

“Yeah,” she snorted with a roll of her eyes. “Gee, my life is looking up. If I manage to survive possible impending death this weekend, I’ll still be grounded until senior year.” 

“But hey, if you’re stuck at home that means no slaying,” he offered with a helpful smile. “No vamps, no stakes, no more ripped clothing. Though I’ll miss the ripped clothing,” he sighed wistfully as Buffy smacked him playfully on the arm, a soft giggle escaping her. 

“That’s my Xander, always with the glass half full,” she grinned. 

“What can I say, I’m a ray of sunshine in this gloomy little piece of nowhere,” he smirked. A halfhearted glance at his wristwatch reminded him of the time, “I’ve got to go find Will, meet you in the library in ten?” 

“I’ll be there with bells on,” Buffy nodded. At Xander’s predictable combination smirk and playful leer she rolled her eyes. “They’re metaphorical bells, Xander.”  Chuckling, he turned away from her, ambling down the hall in search of Willow. 

Buffy returned to her cleaning, picking the last few pieces of scattered garbage and tossing them in the trash. Her momentary good mood was being eaten away by worry. As if her life wasn’t complicated enough without Snyder, the little troll, turning her mother against her. One day she’d prove that the little weasel was some sort of demon and not just an all around jerk. After all, she could slay demons. 

“Well,” she murmured to herself as she crumpled up the butcher paper she had used as a tablecloth, uncaring if the noise disturbed the few loiterers in the lounge, “at least this night can’t possibly get any worse.” 

And then the window shattered. 

The first sound that caught her attention was the shattering glass. It was kind of hard to miss. The second was far more frightening. Amidst the panicked murmurs and nervous shrieks of the teachers and parents now clutching themselves in shock, there was growling. Not mindless, animalistic growls, but gleeful, primal rumblings, noises she was horribly familiar with. Vampires. 

“What can I say?” Spike, she had met him only days before but his voice was one she couldn’t forget. “I couldn’t wait.” 

He was smug, cocky, thoroughly pleased with himself, and standing in the wreckage of what had once been her meticulously organized lounge. That bastard.   

With a roar the vampires rushed forward and Buffy hurried to herd the parents and teachers together, rushing them out of the lounge in a collective panic. Hearing her name being called, her head whipped around and she spotted Xander across the hall, her mother by his side in a terrified daze. 

Pushing the group ahead, she sprinted toward the pair, grabbing her mother’s hand as firmly as she could without breaking it and started dragging her shell-shocked body along with her. “Find Willow!” she shouted over her shoulder to a dumbstruck Xander. 

Willow, Xander remembered with cold dread. Doing his best to ignore the menacing growls that reverberated throughout the entire school, he focused on his most important task. He had to find Willow. 

He caught sight of her at the end of the hall, looking lost and completely confused, and her eyes shining in relief when she spotted him. She looked at him like he was her savior. He hoped he would live up to her expectations. 

“Willow,” he cried as he ran full speed toward her, unable to comprehend the sudden look of horror that crossed her face until he felt the cool, strong grip tug sharply on his arm. Face to face with a vampire he had never seen before and no witty quips on the tip of his tongue, Xander felt embarrassingly frozen in fear. 

“Hey!” he heard Willow shout and part of him wanted to yell at her for endangering herself when she should be running, but then he heard the resounding crack of stone meeting skull and his captor’s grip vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared. Then there was just him and Willow, who interestingly enough was holding a slightly damaged bust of Sunnydale’s founder. 

Having only enough time to raise his eyebrow in pleasant surprise, Xander grabbed her hand and they ran into the nearest room, a supply closet, slamming the door resoundingly behind them and locking it just as quickly as the sounds of a scuffle outside began to die down. 

All he could hear was his pounding heart and the sound of their combined heavy breathing. Collapsing onto an overturned bucket, Xander let his eyes close for a moment, forcing his breath to slow. 

“What happened?” Willow asked incredulously, staring at him with wild eyes as she moved to sit awkwardly on the tile floor, fidgeting with her dress anxiously. “One minute I’m having a chat with Mr. Franklin about our geometry midterm, next thing I know—did someone really jump through a window?!” If Xander was right, she sounded almost impressed. 

“Spike and his boys decided to crash the party,” he grimaced, rubbing his arm slightly, his skin still stinging slightly. Willow noticed and a sympathetic frown blossomed on her face, but before she could make a move to help him, he offered her a placating smile to put her at ease. She didn’t look happy about it, but she stayed where she was. 

“He didn’t wreck all of the decorations, did he?” Willow wondered, brow furrowed. 

“Oh yeah,” he breathed in acknowledgement. “It’s a disaster area in there. Snyder’s going to drop dead when he gets the bill for all the repairs.” 

“Buffy’s going to be mad,” she drawled, “I almost feel sorry for Spike.” 

“Hey,” Xander snapped, staring at her like she was insane, “Crashed through a window with an army of vamps. Trying to kill us. No feeling bad for the big evil, remember?” 

“Got it,” she nodded soberly before they both fell silent. Her head fell into her hands and she took a deep, calming breath. 

“We’re going to be fine, Will,” Xander said softly as Willow’s head rose, her eyes meeting his solemnly. He could feel the nervousness and fear pouring from her; it was his turn to make her feel better. After all, she did that for him all the time. “Buffy will slay and we’ll party, like we always do.” 

She nodded hesitantly, a burgeoning, trusting smile beginning at the corner of her lips. The smile faded as soon as it appeared at the sound of a sharp, accented voice only feet away. 

“Slayer…” Spike drawled, his easily discernable voice, though muffled by the walls and wooden door that separated them from their pursuer, echoed clearly in Xander and Willow’s ear. 

“Here kitty, kitty…” He was taunting them, totally confident and completely comfortable with the idea of all of their deaths. Willow knew her heart was racing, could hear it pounding feverishly in her own ears, and was so sure that Spike could hear it too. 

“I find one of your friends, I’m gonna suck ‘em dry,” he warned Buffy, his voice growing closer, eagerness clouding his tone. “And use their bones to bash your head in,” he muttered, a deep, threatening rumble that caused Willow to exhale sharply, her nerves getting the better of her as he kicked in a door only feet away from their poorly concealed hiding place. “Are you getting a word picture here?” 

She heard a soft rustle of clothing and her gaze darted back to Xander who was slowly sliding to the floor and crawling to her side. He placed a gentle but firm hand over her mouth, looking her in the eyes as he placed a finger over his own closed lips. She nodded in understanding and he let his hand fall as he sat beside her. His hand reached out for her own and gripped it tightly, encouraging her to squeeze it if she got too scared. 

Her grip tightened harshly as Spike’s footsteps grew dangerously close. They could hear muffled noises, instinctively knew that Spike was standing there, just outside the door, and so they just sat there, waiting for the painfully inevitable. 

But it never came. 

“Spike!” there was a hushed, urgent whisper, presumably from one of the blonde’s flunkies, and Xander found himself looking sharply at the still intact door. “Listen!” 

Whatever it was the vampires were listening to, neither he nor Willow could hear it. But Xander had never been more grateful for a phantom noise than then. 

“Someone’s in the ceiling…” Spike nearly sang, triumph in his voice as his footsteps could be heard marching off in another direction. 

Silence prevailed for the longest time, their hands still gripping each other tightly, the feeling almost reassuring as the adrenaline coursing through their bodies calmed and they were left in that exalted feeling of relief that the immediate danger had passed. 

Xander’s hand left hers and Willow glanced at him as he leaned tentatively toward the door, listening. “I think he’s gone,” he murmured, voice still nothing higher than a whisper. His hand was hovering just above the floor, itching to take hold of the doorknob and make a, most likely foolhardy, dash for freedom. 

“He could come back,” Willow whispered hurriedly, the panic in her voice stopping him in his tracks. She was right, just because Spike had left for the moment didn’t mean he wouldn’t be back. Not to mention there was who knew how many other vamps roaming around the school, all ready and willing to take a bite out of them. His hand fell to his side silently and he adjusted his position on the floor, stretching his legs out the length of the floor and resting his hands in his lap, staring at them blankly. 

He didn’t like this feeling of complete helplessness that seemed to fill him. He knew Willow felt it too. This certainly wasn’t the first time they had been in life or death situations, but they usually never had any time to really consider that they might actually die. Things usually happened in a blink of an eye and were over before they knew it. But this time they were left to ponder their fates, alone, with little else to do but wait. 

Willow shifted beside him and he felt her soft hair brush against his neck as she moved to lay her head on his shoulder. A familiar position, Xander adjusted to wrap a comforting arm around her shoulders, his fingers tracing slow circles on the skin of her arm. 

“You know how they say when you’re about to die, your whole life flashes before your eyes,” Willow mumbled, voice slightly distorted by the fabric of his shirt. 

“Yeah, that so doesn’t happen,” he scoffed. It was true, at least in his case. Whenever he felt like he was about to die, he remember a line from a movie he watched ‘Have you ever crossed the road, and looked the wrong way and a car's nearly on you? So what do you do? Something very silly. You freeze. Your life doesn't flash before you, because you're too scared to think - you just freeze and pull a stupid face.’  Freezing and pulling a stupid face, that’s pretty much what happened to him, along with the occasional bad joke. 

“I’ve never been kissed,” she blurted out awkwardly, voice soft and shaky. 

Xander froze, his hand stopping its movement and his arm remaining stiffly around her shoulders. 

“I was just thinking,” she hurried to explain herself, face flushed as she stumbled over her words, “when I thought Spike was about to, uh, suck us dry. I’m about to die and I’ve never even been kissed. Well, I mean, there was that one guy last year. I almost kissed him. But he turned out to be a vampire who wanted me to become the Master’s chew toy, so I guess that doesn’t really count.” 

“Uh, Willow,” Xander said, his discomfort obvious in his tone, but Willow didn’t notice it. At this point he wasn’t even sure if she noticed him at all. 

“Is there something wrong with me? Really. I know I’m not beautiful like Cordelia and Buffy, but Cordelia is a real…well, it starts with a B and rhymes with witch. And Buffy has her own issues to deal with, but do guys see that? No, it’s all ‘Oh she’s hot’ or ‘Check out that girl’. I don’t even register.” 

“That’s not true—,” he tried to interject, which got her attention. From the glare on her face though he was beginning to wish he had kept his mouth shut. 

“You do it too. Don’t lie Xander Harris,” she wagged a menacing finger at him. “When Buffy transferred here, you and Jesse spent the entire day scoping out the new girl. I might as well have not existed. What is it about me? Am I too short, too smart, too geeky, are my boobs too small—?” 

“Venturing into awkward territory there, Will,” he interrupted her with a squeak. 

“Never mind,” she sighed despondently, pulling away from him and scooting away from him as far as she could manage in the tiny, constrictive space. 

“Willow,” Xander started, pausing when he wasn’t sure what to say. A gentle, hesitant hand rested on her shoulder and Willow barely resisted the urge to shrug it off. He was only trying to be supportive, she told herself. He couldn’t help that he was so blind that he didn’t see how in love she was with him or that he just didn’t see her that way. There was no use getting mad at him because he was such a…guy. He was still her Xander-shaped friend and she loved him for that. She just wished he could understand. 

She didn’t want to die with regrets. 

“Hey,” he murmured softly, eliminating the space between them and resting his hands on both of her shoulders, turning her to face him. She didn’t look up, he forged ahead. “Guys are stupid. Believe me, I am one,” he grinned, seeing the barest hint of a smile on her face through a curtain of her dark red hair. “And high school guys especially are idiots. I can barely remember my class schedule most days. But you, you’re brilliant Will. You’re smart, and talented, and pretty, and honestly that scares the crap out of most of us. So we go for girls like Buffy and Cordelia because they’re nice,” at her skeptical glance he amended, “okay, not Cordelia, and they’re simple. And yes, Buffy comes complete with her own person set of baggage, but in the end all she wants is a normal life. But you want more than that, and while the simple stuff makes them happy, it would make you miserable.” 

He hitched a finger under her chin and lifted her face so she could look him in the eyes. Emerald eyes met his, a little watery, and she did her best to look composed when all she wanted to do was cry at his sweet, comforting words. Xander smiled down at her and his thumb rubbed her cheek absently. 

“You worry too much about what guys think,” he admonished kindly. 

Her slight smile faded a bit and Xander looked on in concern. “Sometimes it would just be nice to feel wanted, you know?” she mumbled, her insecurity showing for all the world to see. 

“C’mere,” he mumbled, pulling her into her arms and encouraging her to rest her head on his shoulder as he ran a comforting hand up and down her back. “I know it isn’t the same, but I don’t know what I’d do without you Will. And it may not mean much, but if I have to die in a broom closet, there is no one I’d rather have with me than you.” 

His face scrunched up as he rethought that statement but he relaxed when he felt a tiny ripple of laughter make its way through her body and Willow lifted her head, gracing him with a bright smile, the tear that had been fighting its descent finally trickling down her cheek. 

“Thanks Xan,” she whispered as his thumb moved to wipe away the errant tear. 

Her eyes met his and she noticed a strange, studious look upon his face before his head started to inch lower, closer, and Willow found herself frozen. Part of her wanted to turn her head, to move away, nerves tying her stomach up in knots, but the part of her that had dreamed of this for years won out and she tilted her chin up slightly, unconsciously moving up to meet him. 

His lips brushed hers before he gently took her top lip in between his and added gentle pressure, encouraging her to do the same. She was slow to respond and they were both slightly awkward in their movements but they didn’t part. Lips met in a series of sweet, slow, tentative kisses that spoke of not only mutual love but long years of friendship. 

With one last brush of his lips, Xander pulled away slowly, resting his forehead on hers and staring down at her languidly. “No regrets,” he promised her, pressing a kiss to her forehead and pulling her head down once more to rest on his shoulder. 

Willow smiled as she sank into his familiar embrace, her eyes drifting shut in the comfort of his arms. She knew this wasn’t a dream. Xander hadn’t fallen for her, they wouldn’t be the perfect couple when this whole mess was over, assuming Spike didn’t return. He might love her, but he wasn’t in love with her, and truthfully she was slowly beginning to realize he might never return her feelings. But he was the best friend a girl could ask for, and what they shared was deeper than any bond a girlfriend or boyfriend could ever have. He would always be there for her, whether she needed a shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen to her problems, arms to hold her, or a kiss to reassure her. 

No regrets.    

Now if only Buffy would rescue them already.


End file.
